Tag: Opera

The folks at the Opera Software ASA have released the Opera 10.53 beta version for Linux and FreeBSD. This beta release of Opera for linux has made the web browser faster, and more feature-rich. The new beta version also has better integration with KDE and Gnome desktop environments. There is also full support for skinning in Opera 10.53 in Linux.

Linux has always been a priority at Opera, as many people within our own walls are devoted users,said Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder, Opera Software. It was important for us in this release to make alterations to our terms of usage, in order to make Opera even easier to distribute on Linux.

Opera had released the final version of Opera 10.5x for Windows two months ago, and the Mac version just a week ago. According to the folks at Opera, the Opera 10.5x is the world’s fastest browser. The new version of Opera web browser features a new Carakan JavaScript engine and the Vega graphics library. All these under the hood changes, make Opera 10.5x up to 8 times faster than Opera 10.10 in certain tests.

The new version also includes a brand new rendering engine the Presto 2.5. The new version also offers a Private browsing option to its users. Opera has also made changes to its End User License agreement for easier distribution of the software. The new End User License allows Opera 10.53 Beta to be included in software distribution repositories for wide distribution.

Hera are the major changes in this new release :

Browse with unprecedented speed Our new Carakan JavaScript engine and Vega graphics library make Opera 10.5x more than 8 times faster than Opera 10.10 on tests like Sunspider.

Leave no trace Private browsing offers windows and tabs that eliminate their browsing history when closed, ensuring your privacy.

Control your view easily Zooming in and out of Web pages is easier with a new zoom slider and view controls accessible from the status bar.

Redefine widgets Widgets are now installed as normal applications on your computer and can work separately from the browser.

More elegant look and feel The user interface for Linux has been reworked, and the new Omenu allows access to all features previously available in the menu bar. The menu bar can be easily reinstated.

No more Qt dependence Opera’s user interface now integrates with either GNOME/GTK or KDE libraries, depending on the users’ installation.

Turbo-charged browsing When surfing on slow, congested networks, for example at an airport or on a train, Opera Turbo comes to the rescue, ensuring the fastest page loading no matter the crowd. Tests show that Opera Turbo provides about 65% faster browsing on Edge and around 50% faster browsing speed on 3G networks.

In a surprising move, Opera Software has acquired web based e-mail provider FastMail.FM for an undisclosed sum. FastMail will continue to operate as usual for the moment; however, changes are definitely in the pipeline.

Back in the day, FastMail.FM used to be one of the best free e-mail providers. However, it was one of many email providers left in the lurch by the Gmail revolution. While others like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Mail have marched into the modern webmail era by introducing desktop client like interfaces, huge inbox sizes and other fancy features, FastMail.FM still feels like a reminder of the bygone days.

Exactly what Opera plans to do with Fastmail.FM is not clear. However, it’s safe to assume that Fastmail will be replacing the existing Opera Mail service. Opera has also hinted that it will be building upon FastMail to deliver cross-platform messaging.

Opera Software today announced that it has acquired Web-based e-mail provider FastMail.fm. The acquisition will enable Opera to expand its current messaging product portfolio and deliver cross-platform messaging to a wide range of devices, including computers, mobile phones, TVs and gaming consoles.

Since the release of Opera 4 in 2000, Opera’s desktop browser has included its own innovative e-mail client. Following this acquisition, Opera will be able to offer a consistent e-mail experience across all products. Opera currently has more than 50 million users of its desktop browser and more than 55 million users of Opera Mini, a mobile Web browser that works on almost all handsets available today.

The newest generation of Web users will discover the Web through a mobile device. Having world-class messaging capability alongside a rich and compelling Web experience is essential. By combining forces, Opera and FastMail.fm can offer messaging on any device. This will enhance the value Opera provides to consumers, while assisting our operator partners in reducing customer churn,says Rolf Assev, Chief Strategy Officer, Opera Software.

In an increasingly competitive market, we believe we need to make some big investments to take the next steps forward. Joining together Opera’s expertise in web browsers and especially the mobile market, and FastMail.FM’s expertise in email, will allow us to grow and take on the next big challenges in running and building an email service.

The FastMail.FM staff are also excited about this change. We’ve already been working with Opera’s technical teams to exchange expertise, and to develop new and innovative products. Some FastMail.FM staff are already gearing up to move to Norway (Hei!), and vice-versa. Also one of our great long-term part time developers (Neil Jenkins), who helped develop the photo gallery feature, and the new webmail interface (all the HTML, CSS and JS), is going to work for Opera full-time as well, so he’ll be available to work with the email team to build an even better interface!

With Opera’s expertise, and the combined technical talent of our staff, we believe we’ll be able to create a significantly better FastMail for customers in the future.

Opera software has pushed through another update to its desktop browser. Opera 10.53 is expected to be officially released tomorrow and is a recommended security and stability update.

Opera 10.53 fixes a possibly highly critical vulnerability, which was pointed out by Secunia. This vulnerability affects Opera 10.52 for Windows and may be used by hackers to execute malicious code. This release also fixes a few other issues including freeze-ups on Google Maps. It is not clear as to what has changed in Opera 10.53 for Mac.

In related news, Opera has also released a Beta Release Candidate i.e. a build that is almost as good as Beta, for UNIX. Although this build has some known issues including lack of support for Java and font issues with certain TrueType fonts, it is generally considered good enough for everyday use. Download it if you love to test new products, but don’t use it as your only browser.

Opera Software has just pushed through the first update to Opera Mini for iPhone. Opera Mini 5.0.1 is a mainly a bug fix release, which addresses several issues reported by users, including the “freeze at start-up” issue. It also adds support for Hungarian, besides adding several stability fixes.

Earlier this month, Opera Mini for iPhone was approved by Apple. It quickly went on to become one of the most popular free apps in the App Store. In fact, Opera Mini managed to amass one million downloads on day one itself.

Opera Mini for iPhone features full tabbed browsing, search engine integration, Opera Link (data synchronization), visual speed dial, password manager, find-in-page and session restore. However, the biggest draw of Opera Mini is speed. All webpages are routed through Opera’s servers where they are rendered and compressed. This can provide a significant speed boost on slower networks, besides reducing your bandwidth bill.

Macpup Opera is a branch of Linux based on the famous Puppy Linux, which is known for it’s small size and portability. Puppy was designed to be able to run from a CD or portable flash drive. Macpup Opera takes the Puppy feature set and wraps it up in a beautiful and user friendly interface. The release of version 2.0 of this distro brings with it:

In order to try out Macpup Opera, I downloaded the 163mb ISO live CD image and burned it to my 2Gb SD Flash card using Unetbootin. In a few minutes, I was running Macpup, and I had a nice little laugh, because it barked at me when it was done booting.

The first thing I had to do was to get my wifi network connected. I’ve always been disappointed with the networking wizard that comes with Puppy, but I’ve struggled with it often enough that I got it to recognize my network. Next, I opened the Opera web browser to see how it worked in Macpup.

I was amazed at the speed that I was getting compared to my Windows systems. Opera was surfing, paging, and refreshing faster than I’d ever seen it. This alone is a good reason for me to keep a copy of Macpup around. If my Windows PC ever crashes, I can always boot into a Puppy session for getting fixes off the web.

Many people won’t have any use for this unique Linux version. On the other hand, it’s small, fast, free and really pretty to watch. It’s a great place to start for those who’ve never used Linux before.

Yet another week and yet another major release from the folks at Opera Software. This time it’s the Mac users who have reason to celebrate. Opera 10.52 for Mac, which is the first stable build of the Opera 10.5x trunk for Mac, has been released.

Improved UI: Opera 10.52 looks like a native Macintosh app and behaves like one, thanks to the Cocoa integration. The design has been overhauled to include a unified toolbar and other miscellaneous improvements.

Opera 10.52 for Mac: Peacekeeper Results

Speed: Opera 10.52 introduces the Carakan JavaScript engine, which is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) JavaScript engines in the market.

Opera 10.52 for Mac: Impact of Turbo onf Page Load Time

When coupled with Opera Turbo, which compresses webpages before routing them to your computer, Opera 10.52 can deliver blazing fast browsing speed.

Multi-touch Support: Opera 10.52 also introduces multi-touch support, which takes advantage of the multi-touch trackpads present in modern Macbooks. Pinch to zoom or use two fingers to scroll and three fingers to navigate back and forth in your browser history, all from your trackpad.

The Windows build of Opera 10.52 mainly delivers bug fixes and performance improvements. Linux users have been left out for now. Nevertheless, Opera 10.5x for Linux has been making steady progress over the past few weeks and expect a final build within a few weeks.

Opera Mini 5 is a great little mobile browser. It may not have pinch and zoom or AJAX support, but it more than makes up for these shortcomings through its breezy page loading and unique feature list. Unfortunately, Opera Mini doesn’t allow you to set it as the default system browser. As a result, all links are opened using the in-built browser, instead of Opera Mini.

Opera Mini for iPhone was approved yesterday and it is already making quite a splash. It managed to amass one million downloads (1,023,380 to be exact) on its first day in the Apple app store and is currently ranked in the top 10 free apps category in 86 countries.

In fact, Opera Mini is the most downloaded free app in 69 countries (out of 90) including United States. Of course, the fact that its arrival in the app store was covered by almost all major tech news outlets, definitely helped.

Opera Software is visibly ecstatic with the download figures. Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software, said, Today iPhone users have a choice, and, as the numbers show, they are eager to explore new and faster ways to surf the Web on the iPhone – especially during heavy Web traffic”.

While Opera Mini has garnered almost universal acclaim for its speed, it has been criticized for its unusual page layout and UI (user interface) inconsistencies. Mr. Boilesen has stated that, “We are appreciative of all the feedback we are getting, as it helps us to continually improve our product and better meet the needs of our users.”

You have probably heard by now that Opera Mini has been approved for the Apple App Store. As expected, it is already proving to be quite popular. In fact, Opera Mini is now the most popular free application in the German App Store.

Opera Mini is a great browser, but it does have its own limitations. The remote rendering process it uses was initially designed for low-resolution budget phones. Hence, by default Opera resizes all text on a webpage so that it matches the screen width in zoomed-in state. This can distort the appearance of a website.

If you do not want this feature, you will have to manually disable it from the advanced configuration options. Here is how to do it:

Enter “opera:config” or just “config” in the address bar.

In the page that opens, switch the list box next to “Fix text to screen” from Yes to No.

That’s it! Websites should now appear as intended on your Opera Mini for iPhone.

Christmas has come early for Opera fans – Apple has just approved Opera Mini for the App Store. Apple took its time – 20 days, 08 hours and 31 minutes to be exact, but finally made the right call.

This move may come as a surprise to many, but Opera Software had always been optimistic (at least publically). They were confident that technically Opera Mini doesn’t violate any App Store terms and conditions. However, Opera Mini is definitely a competitor to the in-built Safari browser and many believed that this alone would be enough provocation for Apple.

Opera had managed to rally its supporters and build public support through a carefully orchestrated campaign. It is impossible to say if the fear of negative publicity (and FCC’s ire) played any role in Apple’s decision to let Opera Mini through, but one can’t entirely ignore that possibility.

Opera Mini for iPhone brings its familiar combination of speed (up to 6x faster than the in-built browser) and functionality to the table. Opera Mini managed to sneak through Apple’s strict policies mainly because it doesn’t render the website on your device. Instead, all traffic is routed through Opera’s servers where they are rendered and compressed. This compression results in improved browsing speed and even reduces your bandwidth bills.